Support for vaults in Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)

Feature requests
62

I also created an account to bump this request, Obsidian via WSL2 works but it does not work great. There is a lot of strange issues with apps in WSL that Microsoft might not prioritize fixing anytime soon

63

+1111

It would be great if the Windows Obsidian could handle the WSL folders natively just like Windows folders.

1 Like
64

We are using mdBook to generate documentation in markdown files and store it in our git. Checking it out on wsl2 and being able to use normal terminal commands for committing stuff is helpful. How cool would it be if I can use Obsidian as an editor for my markdown files.

A big +1 from my side. And since this has been a thing since 2020, hopefully it will be implemented soon.

1 Like
65

+1 as well

1 Like
66

+1, please and thank you <3

67

Any updates towards this? It’s still an issue and makes using Obsidian difficult. If you don’t have a second GPU then you have to disable GPU acceleration when running Obsidian within WSL due to the virtualization pass-thru not allowing such things.

68

To chime in here, it appears other apps have had similar issues when trying to run the Windows native app on a WSL path, and the workaround was to set an environment variable to use ‘polling’ rather than the default file watching technique.

Specifically for an app called bruno, the watcher uses chokidar under the hood and one can set the variable CHOKIDAR_USEPOLLING=true to fix this same issue on their app.

I tried to do this by setting the Target field of the shortcut to Windows native WSL to the following:

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /c "SET CHOKIDAR_USEPOLLING=true&& START /D ^"C:\Users\spenc\AppData\Local\Programs\Obsidian^" Obsidian.exe"

and by running Obsidian directly using the embedded subcommand seen in the Target above. I also tested using the \\wsl$\Ubuntu\... and by mounting the network drive to a letter. None of these tests have fixed the issue yet, so I wonder if it’s because Obsidian’s file watcher doesn’t use chokidar and instead we need to set a different variable to enable polling.

I personally would prefer to run Obsidian natively on my computer, but have my files on WSL2 for several reasons which preclude the three other options as listed by @rapatel0.

  • The git strategy I use is unstable/buggy for git for windows (git + git-annex)
  • Native linux git is extremely slow on NTFS, also would be bad trying native git-annex
  • (in other words git has to be WSL2 and files have to be WSL2)
  • Linux native obsidian has a buggy GUI (breaks on tiling using PowerToys FancyZones)
  • Linux native obsidian crashes on certain commands (e.g. Reveal file in explorer via hotkey)

In short, WSL files and native Windows Obsidian is the one path I see for myself, but this fswatcher error is blocking that. A potential path forward I see is enabling polling for the fswatcher. While this is a slower technique and may make large Vaults slower than ideal, it appears to be the only workaround known for watching files from WSL2 mounted on Win11.

69

I believe they are not willing to fix this. Typora has had no such issue since long time ago.